Vice President’s bribery stain

Feb 13, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – We are appalled at what has surfaced and could lead to an enduring stain on Guyana’s Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo. We make no defense for him or rush to no judgment on his guilt or lack of such that besmirches ordinary citizens, but leaves a more lasting and pungent odour when placed against the name of a leader. This allegation of bribe taking on the part of the Vice President is not to his credit, whether true or false, be it trumped up or what can be trampled down. The reality is that it is there, and it will not go away. And if the Vice President did, then that is to his perpetual damnation, and if he didn’t, then the stain and the shame of it remains as it is no longer erasable, which is the trouble with these things.
It is known that we have had our differences with the Vice President when he was President. Now that he is Vice President, which for all intents and purposes makes him President of Guyana’s Oil Management, Oil Visions, and Oil Actions, Standards, and Practices, and transforms him into this country’s de facto President and leader. Some of those differences have been severe and wounding, as originating from his side over the years, but we have a mission and that is to serve the peoples of this country. So, we have persevered to this day. Today we do not seize the opportunity to judge him and condemn him, even though it is our belief that he deserves both for some of the things he has done to this country.
No! He has the chance to come clean and offer himself up to be judged and condemned; or upheld, sympathised with, and pardoned. Truthfully, Dr. Jagdeo is not a sympathetic figure. He cuts an unheeding, impatient, arrogant, troubled figure of a leader, who has fallen prey to a failure and folly as old as man. He allowed the trappings of power to get to his head, control his mind, and dictate his feet in directions which he should not have gone. He has been a picture of inconsistencies, evasions, suspicions, the worst of speculations, and now they are back to haunt him with the ferociousness of a Category-5 hurricane.
He comes across, in this his hour of public trial, as unsteady in defense, unconvincing in presence, and unsettled in resolve. It is as if he is a man searching for the elusive in the dark, which makes his lacklustre stumbling and erratic pawing representative of inconvenient truths of a savaging kind. As said before, in the strength of his posture he will persuade, in the feebleness of his energies he will raise eyebrows, which is the least of his concerns, or compel others to assume the worst, from which he may likely never recover.
The whispers were always there, and so are sturdy convictions that the Vice President did not do his best to deliver the best for the hopeful, trusting people of Guyana. We confess that, as time went by, whatever trust we had for the Vice President evaporated. His ways and wiles left us no choice, but to be true to what we believe. Malice is not a part of our makeup, and there is no delight at the plight in which the Vice President finds himself. How he handles this, how he comports himself, will either clear him or convict him in the vigilant, critical, sometimes helpful, sometimes hostile court of public opinion.
Vice President Jagdeo has a lot to live down, which is one way of examining the ugly developments involving him. On the other hand, he has the opportunity to approach his leadership responsibilities in a different way on a different plain with different degrees of ethics. Persuasive personal honour must be embedded irremovably in the new framework that he adopts and embraces for himself. If the Vice President is guilty as alleged, only he would know, and he should do the right thing and take the dignified road. Go. If he isn’t, then he must move heaven and hell to clear his name. He owes himself that, and Guyana is due that, more than he.

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